I'm a senior editor and the Shanghai bureau chief of Forbes magazine. Now in my 14th year at Forbes, I compile the Forbes China Rich List, Hong Kong Rich List and Taiwan Rich List. I was previously a correspondent for Bloomberg News in Taipei and Shanghai and for the Asian Wall Street Journal in Taipei. I'm a Massachusetts native, fluent Mandarin speaker, and hold degrees from the University of Vermont and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

(Note: This is part of a series of articles, arranged by subject, from last Thursday’s Forbes’ interview with Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou in Taipei. Click here to return to the main screen for other topics.)

Q. The Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement seems to be sidetracked.

A. With regard to student protests over the Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement in March of this year, the students claimed that the signing and review of the agreement were not transparent, and were not conducted in accordance with relevant procedures. They also expressed concern with regard to Taiwan’s engagement with mainland China, and demanded that the agreement be withdrawn. These were the main reasons behind the student protests of March.

However, the two reasons they had for opposing the agreement were not grounded in fact. Before the agreement was signed on June 21 of last year, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) had held 110 rounds of consultations with representatives from 46 subsectors of the services industry, which were attended by 264 people. In other words, this process was not conducted behind closed doors. In addition, the MOEA and the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) made three official reports to the Legislative Yuan. After the agreement was signed, it was submitted to the Legislative Yuan, which held 20 public hearings. And the MOEA organized 144 seminars for the private sector, which were attended by more than 7,900 people. In fact, by the time the legislative review of the agreement started in March, it had gone through the most open and transparent process in R.O.C. constitutional history. For example, some of the public hearings in the Legislative Yuan lasted a whole day. Nevertheless, the students believed that this level of transparency was still insufficient. They kept saying that the process was conducted behind closed doors, but this clearly had no basis in fact.

As for the review done by Legislative Yuan committees, in meetings chaired by members of the Democratic ProgressiveProgressive Party (DPP), members of the Kuomintang (KMT) were not given the chance to speak. And in meetings chaired by KMT members, DPP legislators occupied the podium and prevented the KMT chairperson from presiding over the meeting. The proceedings in these committee meetings were thus rather chaotic. Therefore, the KMT chair announced that the agreement would be sent to the Yuan Sitting after the committees had completed their work. This was interpreted by some as a move to pass the agreement. In fact, it had not been passed and had not even left the Legislative Yuan, but this misunderstanding had already taken hold, with people believing that the KMT was using this tactic to forcefully push the agreement through the legislature. This misunderstanding among the students was the main reason behind their occupation of the Legislative Yuan.

The first demand made by the students following their occupation of the Legislative Yuan was that the agreement should be reviewed and voted on article by article. This was already the consensus between the DPP and the KMT, and the KMT therefore immediately agreed to this demand. The students also demanded an oversight act for agreements between Taiwan and mainland China, so as to supervise related procedures. The KMT also consented to this demand. However, the KMT did not consent to the students’ demand that the article-by-article review of the agreement should only be conducted after the oversight act had been passed. The KMT believed that these two processes should proceed at the same time.

The Executive Yuan sent a draft oversight act to the Legislative Yuan in April, but over these past two months the DPP has continued to occupy the podium to prevent this act from being reviewed by the legislature in an article-by-article manner. This is currently the main problem. The DPP has occupied the podium of the Legislative Yuan on 43 occasions, a record. The problem is thus not a lack of willingness on our part to communicate, but the obstructionism of a minority who resort to tactics such as occupying the podium when they believe their position is not supported by the legislature, preventing many important bills from moving forward. This is the major challenge Taiwan’s democracy faces at this moment.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

As a citizen and life-time resident of Taiwan, I can help a little bit to complete the story (or truth).

Here is my ten cents: Mr. Ma was not willing to let the agreement been reviewed and approved by parliament. All public hearings conducted after the signing of the agreement was done after repeated requests from citizens and law makers, not to mention he insists the agreement must be approved without any modification before the end of June, 2014.

His ignorant and arrogance finally ignited Sun Flower Movement that students took over parliament in March. The support rate of Mr. Ma drop to 9.2% at some point in time during the movement.